


Eighteen, Alone, In Love With The Answer Phone

by paperwar



Category: Ookiku Furikabutte
Genre: Asian Character, Chromatic Character, Chromatic Source, College, F/F, Future Fic, University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-04
Updated: 2010-09-04
Packaged: 2017-10-11 11:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/111930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperwar/pseuds/paperwar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shinooka starts university looking backwards.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eighteen, Alone, In Love With The Answer Phone

**Author's Note:**

> This was the original snippet that led me into [Not Quite Lost, Not Quite Found](http://archiveofourown.org/works/109617). This isn't, strictly speaking, a prequel, because Shinooka's romantic life at university is different here. It's more like a look at things slightly shifted, or from some other vantage point in the multiverse.

Shinooka goes off to university. She has a roommate. She makes friends. Sometimes, with one or another of them, there's a moment of touching too long, fingers on shoulders or arms that feel too warm, too intimate. There's a message there, from whatever girl it happens with, but she's not paying it enough attention to do anything about it.

Or maybe she doesn't want to. Maybe she keeps thinking about Momoe, the things that could never happen but that kept her up late at night, aching, fingers slick, heart a bit sore.

It hasn't been that long. It's been far too long. One night, when she's particularly lost into drink at a party, celebrating the end of a dreaded exam, she decides: _fuck it_. And she leans in and kisses one of her friends -- her name doesn't matter, it doesn't matter at all -- one of the girls with whom Shinooka had those tiny electric moments.

She says fuck it, and wakes up with underwear strewn across the room, hair messy, lipstick smeared on her neck and breasts, tangled in the covers with someone who's very pretty but not, on reflection, very interesting.

And what did that do? What, exactly, was she trying to do? If it was just about an orgasm, well, she's able to take care of that on her own.

_This is stupid_, she berates herself. _High school stuff. You're just hung up on this because you never got what you wanted and now you have some dream that maybe you will._ And yet she can't stop having fantasies about running into Momoe during the semester break. They're both adults, equals now. Surely then Momoe wouldn't have any qualms, right?

Two days later, Shinooka tells the girl -- she of the tangled sheets and smeared lipstick -- that nothing can go further. This is not a mistake in itself. The girl seems prepared to accept this, if a bit disappointed, until Shinooka adds that it's because she's waiting for someone else. Her brain is screaming at her to shut up, shut up, and yet Shinooka goes on to explain that it's the coach from the high school baseball team she managed.

The scorn this evokes is fierce. The girl says all the little things that Shinooka's thought but tries desperately to talk herself out of: It was just a little girl crush; Momoe isn't waiting around for her; she might not even really like girls; she probably just put up with Shinooka kissing her because Shinooka was a good manager; she must've felt awkward.

They're sitting in Shinooka's dorm room. She has no idea why she felt compelled to invite the girl over in order to finish with her; they should've gone to a cafe or some other neutral territory. Now Shinooka feels cornered, panicked, enraged.

"I think" -- she's proud of her even tone, her measured words -- "you'd better go." She stands up; the girl doesn't take the invitation to leave, so Shinooka walks over to the door and opens it. She looks back expectantly.

The girl laughs; it's sour, prickly. "It's a shame," she says, edging past Shinooka into the hallway, "that you're so hung up on some teenage dream. What a waste." _That little shit_, Shinooka thinks. It was true, from what she remembered, that the girl had a tantalizing ass and soft, large nipples. She'd been a good kisser and her fingers adept.

But at the end of the day, was that enough? Enough for one night, certainly; and if Shinooka hadn't been so drunk she might've even enjoyed it more.

She shuts the door and sinks down to the ground, resting her back against the door and her head on her knees.

_She's right_, she thinks. _It is a waste. But I've tried_, she argues to herself. _I've tried. There isn't anyone else at all like Momoe._ Nothing is as alluring as what you can't have, she knows, and she can't get past the dream, teenaged as it might be.

She wonders what Momoe is doing these days. Maybe she has another manager she's kissing. Maybe she doesn't push this one away if anyone else so much as approaches from a mile away. Maybe she kisses this one first. Maybe they're sleeping together.

It's too much to contemplate. It's ridiculous, this possessiveness over a woman with whom she's shared, essentially, nothing.

It's not nothing to Shinooka, but it's probably nothing to Momoe.

She makes a weary little noise and squeezes her eyes closed, resolutely thinking about anything else until she falls asleep, right there against the door.


End file.
